The game is a simple but moving story that’s told flawlessly. It’s emotionally moving in a way incredibly few video games are. That’s a quality that makes any title a masterpiece in its own right. Honestly, it shouldn’t have gotten a sequel. Everything here is so self contained and amazing that they should’ve put effort into doing a new standalone story of this quality, because the ending is perfect and probably should’ve been left alone. This is why the sequel is fundamentally flawed.
I think people really downplay the gameplay here. The core mechanics are plain fun and the weapon progression is perfect. Add a neat crafting system on the side and you’ve got an entertaining shooter that helps break up story sections. The environmental puzzles, on the other hand, are much more flawed, at least in my eyes. Quite a few of them were interesting, but some were just moving a ladder from point A to B. This is much more suited to a traversal-focused game like Uncharted, where a slower pace of exploration breaks up the fast paced climbing parts. But honestly, it’s not a big deal, and I’m not sure if I’d remove them from the game given the choice. The second game’s traversal blows this out of the water with its insane rope puzzles. As you can probably tell, I have a lot of mixed feelings towards the second game.
On an unrelated side note, I thought the HBO show did a good job adapting the story, even if it’s inherently weaker outside of the video game medium. I think that speaks for how miraculous the final product here is, how well everything fits together. The adaptation was very high quality, though, and I appreciated the new content it offered. I’d probably give it something like a 4/5.
I think people really downplay the gameplay here. The core mechanics are plain fun and the weapon progression is perfect. Add a neat crafting system on the side and you’ve got an entertaining shooter that helps break up story sections. The environmental puzzles, on the other hand, are much more flawed, at least in my eyes. Quite a few of them were interesting, but some were just moving a ladder from point A to B. This is much more suited to a traversal-focused game like Uncharted, where a slower pace of exploration breaks up the fast paced climbing parts. But honestly, it’s not a big deal, and I’m not sure if I’d remove them from the game given the choice. The second game’s traversal blows this out of the water with its insane rope puzzles. As you can probably tell, I have a lot of mixed feelings towards the second game.
On an unrelated side note, I thought the HBO show did a good job adapting the story, even if it’s inherently weaker outside of the video game medium. I think that speaks for how miraculous the final product here is, how well everything fits together. The adaptation was very high quality, though, and I appreciated the new content it offered. I’d probably give it something like a 4/5.